Wide-Field Images by Peter Campbell-Burns

The images below are widefield images of regions in the Constellation of Cygnus.  the first is Centred on approximately 55 Cyg, RA: 20h 49m 17.91s Dec: +46° 9′ 16.8″) and the second centres almost on the North America nebula itself.   The field of view of these images is approximately 10° x 8° (47.75 arcsec/pixel).  They were both taken more than two years ago using just a 35mm Lens - but my initial processing of the data looked awful.   Having learned much since then, I’ve had another go and it’s amazing how much more I’m managed to get out of the data. 

 

In the first image the North America Nebula and the Pelican Nebula can both be just seen in the bottom left hand corner.  This region is a strong emitter of Hydrogen Alpha wevelengths, but this image was captured as a broadband image (the MX7c is a single shot colour camera with a cyan / yellow / magenta bayer matrix).  With no guidescope it was difficult to frame NGC 7000 despite the wide field of view, so this was done by eye, and not very well!   The density of stars is impressive.  This image was captured using an Starlight Xpress MX7c with a 35mm lens mounted on an EQ1 mount.  The image comprises 30 frames of 60 seconds exposure processed and stacked using Astroart 4.0.